Ann Shippy, MD
Welcome to Mold, Mycotoxin, and Chronic Illness Summit. I’m your host, Dr. Ann Shippy. And today I want to tell you a little bit about my own experience with mold. People that find out that I had a pretty well, actually several pretty serious run-ins with mold want to know what my experience was in late 2009. I woke up one morning after months of deteriorating, walked to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water to take some supplements, and it slipped out of my hand. And I had broken glass everywhere. It was my wake-up call to really know how sick I was. My hair had been falling out in big clumps just covering the sink on the bathroom floor. I had so much pain in my body that I didn’t want my kids to hug me. I would feel more exhausted at the end of a weekend. And I, you know, even after resting, I just could not get a break. And I was losing the strength in my right arm. I was having fasciculation, which both of those things look like an ALS diagnosis, which really was pretty intimidating and scary. I had had other health issues that I had, you know, was so grateful for.
I had undiagnosed celiac disease as a chemical engineer and executive manager at IBM, and couldn’t get that one figured out by the doctors. So I figured it out myself. Got so fascinated with how the body works that I quit technology and engineering and went to medical school. And then I had another pretty major health crisis a couple of years after going into traditional internal medicine, medical practice, really great practice. I was enjoying it. I was definitely off my course though, cause I had quit engineering to do medicine differently. But I had had one baby in Med school and one in residency, and I didn’t see a clear path where to go next to get the additional education. And I had these one year old and a five year old. So went into traditional medical practice and I developed a couple of pretty scary autoimmune disorders, Sjögren’s syndrome, where could not wear eye contact anymore because they were so dry and I always had to be chewing some kind of gum or have some kind of mint in my mouth to be able to talk because my mouth was so dry. And then antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, that increases your risk for heart attack and stroke.
So at that point, I had learned, found functional medicine and got on that path and totally healed from those illnesses. So I had a lot of confidence in my body and my mind to be able to figure out hard things. But that was, you know, definitely stopped me in my tracks that morning that I couldn’t even hold a glass and that was when I had an angel in my life, one of my patients that just intuitively knew I was sick, even though I thought I was covering it up pretty well and she had gone through a mold journey with a mold called chaetomium and she helped me. She insisted on coming to my house and seeing if she had the symptoms that she would get with chaetomium. And she was absolutely right. So at that point in time, I had just started to learn a little bit about mold. It was about three months before I had gone to an integrative health conference and even heard that mold could be toxic. At that time and looking back, I had not known that there had been water damage in some of the houses that I had lived in the past but I did not understand the health consequences. So I’m so fortunate for this patient that she tied the connections together for me, that it might be mold. And I took her advice because within a few minutes, she felt terrible in my house and I didn’t take very much with me except for my kids and a few personal items and ended up really not keeping much.
Fortunately, I was renting the house, so I didn’t have to figure out remediation at that point. There was so little information about what to do, but I just, I did keep testing the house until I finally found the chaetomium and I did, you know, test that we weren’t sensitive enough but I did finally confirm that it was chaetomium. I’d go to my house in a hazmat suit and keep trying different kinds of sampling and finally found it was in the air conditioning system and that there had been a leak. There was just a slight discoloration on the wall in one of my son’s rooms. And what had happened is the flashing from the chimney allowed white water to come down along that wall enough to wet the wall and actually underneath the floor and his under his bed and down the wall in my bedroom to grow mold, but not enough to alert us that there was a problem and that it turned out it was also in the air conditioning system. So at that point, there was a little bit of information from Dr. Shoemaker about about mold. So I looked into that and I started trying the things that he recommended, but they made me sicker. So once again, I am having to figure out something that wasn’t well explained at that time. This was 2009 and figured out that I really had to have a super clean environment, I had to use things like an infrared sauna, and some detox baths that I still do on a regular basis today to keep my detox pathways working.
Well, liposomal glutathione was a game changer for me and then I really couldn’t tolerate much as far as binders at all. Now I know I can tolerate Peptisol but I couldn’t take the colostrum or welchol that was being recommended at that time. And then I did my functional medicine things that I knew. I had been practicing functional medicine for about four years and I knew I had to work on my microbiome and give my body some mitochondrial support to really help my body to heal. So I’m so fortunate that I’ve totally recovered no fasciculation anymore and my right arm is as strong as it ever was. And now I really know the tool that I need to have in my toolbox to heal as well as really help my patients. And it’s gotten me on this path of just constant curiosity about what can help my patients to heal more quickly. You know, it’s pretty drastic when you have to get rid of all of your belongings and I’ve actually done it twice now. Kept a few things that could go in the dishwasher kind of thing. But I’m so curious about what the things are that can help us to do prevention as well as get us well, more quickly and less drastically. So there are so many great talks in my summit that I think will help to really explain some of these important building pieces. And then there are things that I’ve included in my practice because they are so, so impactful. So we do some specialty IVs with Phosphorylcholine and NSAID. I often recommend people go do hyperbaric when it’s appropriate, get lymphatic treatment, and sometimes do ozone, can be helpful. And then things like limbic retraining, vagal retraining, and neurofeedback are really foundational for almost all of this when we’ve gotten into any kind of chronic illness because our nervous systems are just so taxed by the toxins and taxed by the stress of dealing with the chronic illness.
And then we’ve really come such a long way since 2009 in additional testing that we can do when it’s really challenging, you know, when the basic things aren’t working and that most people need. And we really need to add additional puzzle pieces together and see where people are. So looking at genetics, and epigenetics. So how the genes are expressing transcriptomics even down further about how the genes are expressing. Looking in great detail at the microbiome. Are there low-grade chronic infections? Are there deficiencies in some of the microbes that need to be there to have a healthy immune system, to have a healthy gut? We can look in great detail at mitochondrial function and see how well cell membranes are working. We can look at histamine and methylation pathways. There’s just so many pieces of the puzzle. So the most important challenge for you is to really make sure your environment is clean. That’s the number one thing with getting well. Everything else goes so much better. So really pay attention to the lectures, and the speakers on testing and having a successful remediation. But that’s every speaker will talk about that point to that. So not to sound like a broken record, it really is critical to do everything that you possibly can to get in a clean environment and then just be aware, be looking for, okay, what are the platinum lining so that you can keep your spirits up. The things that you learn about your body that are going to help you to remain resilient in the future?
I’m so grateful for this role that I get to play now. On teaching about mold and mycotoxins and chronic illness. I get to go to conferences and teach other physicians, and write textbook chapters and journal articles. Then I get to educate the general public through podcasts, blogs, books, documentaries, articles, and social media. Definitely check out my Instagram and LinkedIn. This constant good information that we’re putting out and now this summit. I am so, so grateful that I get to do this with you and give you the tools that you need to help you to heal and inspire hope. Thank you so much for joining me.
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